Energy Transition
Energy Transition | Carbon Capture, Storage and Utilisation
Outcrop Analogues for CO2 Storage (Devon and Dorset, UK)
Format and Duration:
5 days
Using outcrop studies, participants will consider the effects of reservoir geometry, porosity, permeability, and geomechanical properties on CO₂ flow patterns, storage, injectivity, reservoir strength, and behaviour at high fluid pressure. Analogues to top-seals for CCS sites will be considered, plus fault reactivation at elevated CO₂ pressure, well design, and completions strategies.
Business impact: Participants on this field course will learn to apply outcrops along the Devon and Dorset coast as geological analogues for some major CCS projects including Hynet (Hamilton), Endurance, Acorn/Goldeneye, and East Mey.
Schedule
Duration and Training Method
This is a field course supported by short classroom sessions. Discussion and hands-on exercises will be conducted at all field localities.
Course Overview
Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn to:
- Detail the effect of reservoir properties on CO₂ storage capacity and CO₂ injectivity.
- Examine the influence of reservoir heterogeneity on CO₂ movement patterns.
- Explain how faults with different orientations and geometries may undergo reactivation at elevated CO₂ pressures.
- Develop strategies for considering possible CO₂-water-rock reactions depending on host rock mineralogy and fluid chemistry.
- Evaluate CO₂ well completions strategies.
- Appraise top-seals in terms of their lateral and stratigraphic variability of geomechanical and petrophysical properties.
- Develop approaches for considering the possible extent of reservoir dilation and reservoir fracturing due to elevated CO₂ pressure.
Course Content
The field course will visit reservoir and top-seal analogues to consider the following key topics:
- How reservoir geometry will affect CO₂ flow patterns.
- The effect of reservoir permeability on CO₂ injectivity.
- How reservoir porosity affects CO₂ storage.
- The effect of geomechanical properties on reservoir strength and behaviour following CO₂ injection (i.e., reservoir dilation, fracturing) at high fluid pressure.
- Reactions that may occur in sandstone and carbonate reservoirs, focussing on the rate and likelihood of dissolution versus precipitation of minerals.
- Top-seals for CCS sites - geometry, heterogeneity, permeability, capillary entry pressure, and advective CO₂-loss, CO₂ diffusive loss, and fracturing at elevated CO₂ pressure.
- The effect of stress orientations in the subsurface relative to fault orientations and the possibility of fault reactivation at elevated CO₂ pressure.
- The influence of rock properties on CO₂ injection well design and completions strategies - weak (friable) vs. relatively strong (brittle) lithologies.
Course Itinerary
Please note that the following itinerary is subject to weather and tidal conditions.
Day 0: Arrival
- Group to meet at Heathrow Airport for transfer to Sidmouth
- Introductory meeting to include HSSE briefing
Day 1
- Dawlish: aeolian-fluvial sandstones as CO₂ reservoirs
- Exmouth: impacts of faults, fault damage zones, and juxtaposition on CO₂ storage
Day 2
- Budleigh Salterton/Sidmouth: top-seals for CO₂ storage projects
- Ladram Bay: effects of reservoir heterogeneity
Day 3
- Watton Cliff, West Bay: fault seal and stress fields; effects of cemented bands within sandstones
- Freshwater Bay, Isle of Portland: carbonates as CO₂ reservoirs
Day 4
- Durdle Door and Man o'War Cove: chalk for CO₂ storage and EOR (enhanced oil recovery); drilling and completions; reactivity with CO₂
- Lulworth Cove: effects of tectonics; offshore aquifers as potential CO₂ storage reservoirs
- Kimmeridge Bay: fault systems; fractured shales for waste CO₂ injection
Day 5
- Wytch Farm overview: modern systems; environmental impact of CO₂ storage projects; repurposing old hydrocarbon fields for CO₂ storage
- Studland Bay: poorly consolidated sands for CO₂ storage
- Course wrap up
- Transfer to Heathrow Airport
Who Should Attend and Prerequisites
This course is aimed at geoscientists and engineers, but other subsurface staff will also find the course useful. Team leaders and managers of teams involved in CCS projects would also benefit from participation. This field course is suitable for multi-disciplinary team attendance.
Instructors
Howard Johnson
Background
Howard Johnson has around 30 years of petroleum-related experience, divided equally between Shell and Imperial College London. He is currently the Shell Professor of Petroleum Geology at Imperial College, a position that he has held since 1993. He is Director of the MSc Petroleum Geoscience course (45-50 students annually), and Head of the Petroleum Geoscience and Engineering Research Section, which is a research-active, multidisciplinary group comprising 14 academic staff and around 50 PhD students and research staff. His personal research interests are in clastic sedimentology and reservoir characterization.
He has wide experience in delivering technical courses for petroleum industry professionals, including Development Geology, Reservoir Characterisation and Sedimentology. He has published around 50 technical publications.
Affiliations and Accreditation
PhD University of Oxford - Geology (focus on Sedimentology)
BSc University of Liverpool - Geology
SPE
AAPG
PESGB
Geological Society
Courses Taught
N008: An Introduction to Reservoir Appraisal & Development
N195: Deltaic to Deep Water Depositional Systems of NW Borneo - Concepts & Models for Reservoir Prediction (NW Borneo, Malaysia)
N577: Outcrop Analogues for CO2 Storage (Devon and Dorset, UK)
Richard Worden
Background
Professor Richard Worden is leader of the Diagenesis Research Group and programme director of the MSc on Petroleum Reservoir Geoscience at Liverpool University. He has more than 30 years of industry and research experience.
Prof. Worden undertook a BSc in Geology and Geochemistry at the University of Manchester, completing it with a 1st class honours degree in 1984. Following a PhD at Manchester University in 1988, he worked for BP Research and BP Exploration in Sunbury, UK, for 6 years. This was followed by a lectureship at Queen’s University in Belfast until 2000 and then a professorship at Liverpool University.
Richard has worked on a number of areas of research, almost all related to oil and gas geoscience, with focus on high quality reservoir-scale data (including quantitative mineral and textural data, and the integration of petrophysical, petrographic, geomechanical, geochemical, and sedimentological data) to help with oil and gas exploration, appraisal and asset management. He has worked extensively on sandstone reservoir quality throughout his career, with focus on the causes of anomalous porosity-preservation in deeply buried sandstone reservoirs. His research is now extending into reservoir property-related issues involved in the energy transition (CCS, hydrogen generation and storage). He has published seminal papers on the role of microquartz coatings and on the effects of early oil emplacement on quartz cementation, with a key paper on chlorite-inhibition of quartz currently in press with the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Affiliations and Accreditation
PhD University of Manchester - Geology, Mechanisms of Mineral Reactions
BSc University of Manchester - Geology and Geochemistry
PESGB - Member
Geological Society - Fellow
Courses Taught
N523: Sandstone Reservoir Quality and Diagenesis
N565: Carbon Capture and Storage for Geoscientists and Engineers
N567: Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage
N577: Outcrop Analogues for CO2 Storage (Devon and Dorset, UK)
N591: Geochemistry of CCS: Reservoirs, Seals and the Engineered Environment
N675: Sandstone Diagenesis and Reservoir Quality for Exploration, Appraisal, Field Development, and CCS Projects
W005: The Upper Jurassic of the North Sea: A Case Study in Assessing Controls on Reservoir Quality in Shallow Marine Depositional Systems
Accreditation and Certification
CEU: 4 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 40 Professional Development Hours
Certificate: Certificate Issued Upon Completion
RPS is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU. We comply with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognised internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices.
We issue a Certificate of Attendance which verifies the number of training hours attended. Our courses are generally accepted by most professional licensing boards/associations towards continuing education credits. Please check with your licensing board to determine if the courses and certificate of attendance meet their specific criteria.